How to Connect iCloud, Fastmail, or Any IMAP Inbox to Claude

Connecting iCloud, Fastmail, or any IMAP mailbox to Claude takes one thing Outlook doesn't need: an app-specific password. You generate it inside your email provider, paste it into MCPEmails once, and Claude can read, search, and send through that inbox. No OAuth dance, no SMTP server settings to memorize.

This is the route for every provider that isn't Gmail or Microsoft. iCloud, Fastmail, Yahoo, Zoho, Yandex, and any generic IMAP host all run through the same IMAP/SMTP transport, so they share an identical feature set. If you can get an app password out of the provider, you can connect it. Gmail connects the same way, with a Google app password over IMAP.

Why these providers use an app password, not OAuth

Outlook exposes a modern OAuth API, so MCPEmails connects it with Sign in with Microsoft instead of a password. (A work or school Microsoft 365 account may need an IT admin to approve the app once first; the Outlook and Microsoft 365 guide explains it.) Gmail works like the providers here: it connects with a Google app password over IMAP, and Google only lets you create one once 2-Step Verification is on. iCloud and Fastmail don't offer that path to third-party email tools. Instead they hand you an app-specific password: a long, randomly generated password scoped to a single application, separate from your real account password and revocable on its own.

One correction worth making, because older write-ups get it wrong: Fastmail is app-password only. Fastmail used to support an OAuth flow for some integrations, but for connecting to MCPEmails today you generate an app password in Fastmail's settings. Same as iCloud. If a guide tells you to "sign in with Fastmail" through OAuth, it's stale.

The app password becomes the one credential MCPEmails stores for that inbox, encrypted with AES-256-GCM at rest and decrypted on our servers only when a request needs it. It's never sent to Claude. Your actual email is never stored: every tool call fetches it live from the provider and discards it.

Generate an app-specific password for iCloud

1. Go to appleid.apple.com and sign in with your Apple Account.
2. In the Sign-In and Security section, open App-Specific Passwords.
3. Click the + (Generate an app-specific password), give it a label like MCPEmails, and confirm with your Apple Account password.
4. Apple shows you a password in the format abcd-efgh-ijkl-mnop. Copy it now. You can't view it again later.

You'll need two-factor authentication turned on for your Apple Account — app-specific passwords aren't available without it. The IMAP host for iCloud is imap.mail.me.com and SMTP is smtp.mail.me.com, but MCPEmails fills those in for you when you pick iCloud as the provider, so you usually won't touch them. The iCloud Mail settings page lists the same values.

Generate an app password for Fastmail

1. Sign in to Fastmail and open Settings → Privacy & Security → Connected apps & API tokens (older accounts label it App Passwords).
2. Click New app password.
3. Name it (MCPEmails works), and for access choose Mail (IMAP/SMTP) so it can both read and send.
4. Fastmail generates the password once. Copy it before you close the dialog.

Fastmail's IMAP host is imap.fastmail.com and SMTP is smtp.fastmail.com. Again, picking Fastmail in MCPEmails sets these automatically. The Fastmail settings page has them too.

Connect a generic IMAP inbox (everything else)

For Yahoo, Zoho, Yandex, a self-hosted mail server, or anything else with an IMAP endpoint, the steps are the same shape: get an app password from the provider (most that support 2FA require one), then hand MCPEmails four things:

• IMAP host and port (commonly 993 for TLS)
• SMTP host and port (commonly 465 or 587)
• Your email address as the username
• The app password as the password

If you genuinely have only a regular password and the provider doesn't offer app passwords, that will work too — but an app password is the right move. It limits blast radius. Revoke it and only this connection dies, not your whole account. For ports, TLS modes and troubleshooting on any other host, see the full IMAP connector guide.

Connect the inbox in MCPEmails

Once you have the password copied:

1. Open the dashboard and go to Inboxes → Connect Inbox.
2. Pick your provider — iCloud, Fastmail, or Generic IMAP.
3. Paste your email address and the app-specific password. For generic IMAP, also confirm the host and port.
4. Save. The inbox is live in under a minute.

That's the whole thing. If you want the fastest possible version across any provider, the under-two-minute connect walkthrough covers it end to end.

Point Claude at your inbox

Connecting the inbox and connecting Claude are two separate steps. The inbox lives in MCPEmails; now you give Claude the MCP endpoint so it can call the tools.

In claude.ai:

1. Go to Customize → Connectors.
2. Click Add connector and paste the endpoint: https://www.mcpemails.com/api/mcp
3. Click Connect, sign in with your MCPEmails account, and approve the scopes you want — read:email, send:email, or both.

No API key, no config file. claude.ai uses OAuth with PKCE under the hood, and the token Claude gets is scoped to exactly what you approved. If you're on a client that can't do OAuth — Cursor, Cline, a cURL script — you mint a scoped key instead, which I cover in email access for Cursor, Cline, and VS Code.

Once it's connected, have Claude run inbox_list first. It returns your inbox and its inbox_id, so you never copy-paste a UUID. From there it's the core tools — email_read (list, read, and search messages), email_compose (send, reply, forward), and email_organize — plus a few more for folders, drafts, scheduling, and contacts. Each runs through an action parameter.

A prompt to confirm it works:

Use inbox_list to find my iCloud inbox, then summarize my 5 most recent unread messages.

How delete works on IMAP

Here's the part people miss. A normal delete moves the message to Trash on every provider. With permanent: true, MCPEmails flags the message as deleted and expunges it on IMAP, and uses Microsoft Graph's permanent delete on Outlook. Gmail over IMAP then follows Gmail's own IMAP settings: by default, expunging a message from Inbox or a label only removes that label and the message stays in All Mail, while expunging it from Trash deletes it for good.

On the other IMAP hosts it is simpler. Fastmail, iCloud, Yahoo, Zoho, Yandex, and generic IMAP all support hard expunge: Claude can permanently remove a message, not just trash it. If you want an agent that actually cleans up after itself, IMAP (or Outlook) lets it. Useful, and also a reason to be deliberate about which scopes you grant. Expunge is irreversible.

Search behaves a little differently too. Gmail gets its full operator syntax, Outlook uses KQL, and IMAP providers use IMAP text search — capable, but not as expressive as Gmail's operators. Worth knowing if you're writing search-heavy prompts.

What you can build once it's connected

The mechanics are the same regardless of provider, so any workflow you've seen for Gmail works on your Fastmail or iCloud inbox. A few that pull their weight:

• Morning triage that flags what needs a human and drafts replies to the rest. See inbox triage and summarize.
• A near-real-time auto-responder. One honest caveat: MCPEmails is poll-based, not push — there are no webhooks, so the agent checks for new mail on a schedule. The auto-responder build explains how to do that well.

If you're still deciding whether to wire email into an agent at all, start with the pillar: how to give your AI agent access to email.

Wrap-up

iCloud, Fastmail, and IMAP aren't second-class here. Generate an app password, paste it into Inboxes → Connect Inbox, point Claude at the endpoint, and you've got an agent with full read/send access plus a real permanent delete. It's free to start, no card, one inbox forever.